Page:Early Autumn (1926).pdf/193

 are. You haven't forgotten what I told you on the terrace at Brook Cottage. . . . It's grown more true every day. . . all of it." When he saw that she had become suddenly grave, he said, "And what about you?"

"You know how impossible it is."

"Nothing is impossible . . . nothing. Besides, I don't mean the difficulties. Those will come later. . . . I only mean your own feelings."

"Can't you see that I like you? . . . I must like you else I wouldn't have come alone this morning."

"Like me," he echoed with bitterness. "I'm not interested in having you like me!" And when she made no reply, he added, almost savagely, "Why do you keep me away from you? Why do you always put a little wall about yourself?"

"Do I?" she asked, stupidly, and with a sense of pain.

"You are cool and remote even when you laugh."

"I don't want to be—I hate cold people."

For a moment she caught a quick flash of the sudden bad temper which sometimes betrayed him. "It's because you're so damned ladylike. Sometimes I wish you were a servant or a scrub-woman."

"And then I wouldn't be the same—would I?"

He looked up quickly, as if to make a sudden retort, and then, checking himself, rode on in silence. Stealing a glance at him, Olivia caught against the wall of green a swift image of the dark, stubborn tanned head—almost, she thought, like the head of a handsome bull—bent a little, thoughtfully, almost sadly; and again a faint, weak feeling attacked her—the same sensation that had overcome her on the night of her son's death when she sat regarding the back of Anson's head and not seeing it at all. She thought, "Why is it that this man—a stranger—seems nearer to me than Anson has ever been? Why is it that I talk to him in a way I never talked to Anson?" And a curious feeling of pity seized